Severed finger costs brewery £10k

Britain’s oldest brewery business, Shepherd Neame, has been fined £10,000 after a worker got his hand caught in a machine, severing a finger and crushing his thumb and middle finger.

Shepherd Neame was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £1,007 in costs after admitting a breach in health and safety regulations.

Billy Scanlan, from Sheerness, was hosing down an area near a running production machine when he slipped. Instinctively Scanlan put out his left arm to regain his balance causing his hand to be drawn into the machine by a sprocket at the end of a conveyor, severing the tip of his index finger and crushing his thumb and middle finger.

The 21-year-old’s left finger had to be amputated and repairs made to his thumb and middle finger. Scanlan has not been able to return to work since and claims to still suffer from “significant” phantom pain and flashbacks.

An investigation of the by the HSE into the accident on 23 June 2014 found the company had failed to make sure that staff couldn’t access dangerous moving parts of the machine.

Maidstone Magistrates Court heard on 29 January that the area around the machine where the accident happened was mostly protected with “interlocks and lightguards”. However Mr Scanlan, who had been employed at the site for over a year, used a maintenance gate that wasn’t interlocked to access the area. Because there was no automatic shut-off, the machine kept running.

The brewery had been warned to secure the maintenance gate following a previous inspection by the HSE in 2012, but had failed to do so as shown by this incident.

After the hearing, HSE Inspector Rob Hassell said: “This was an entirely-preventable incident. Shepherd Neame was aware of the guarding requirements for such a machine, but neglected to make sure that these safety measures were fully and consistently implemented.

“Those failures led to Billy Scanlan suffering a painful injury that has permanent consequences. Shepherd Neame had received previous advice from HSE on the same issue, but didn’t act sufficiently robustly to prevent this type of incident happening. All employers have a duty to protect their staff from risks they face doing their work and, in this case, that means making sure running machinery is effectively guarded.”

Shepherd Neame of Court Street, Faversham, Kent, was fined £10,000 and ordered to pay £1,007 in costs after admitting a breach of the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998.